Marvel Studios' Ant-Man and The Wasp - Official Trailer

Would you look at that long ass post header that doesn't all fit on one line and looks terrible. I copied that directly off the youtube page, it's way too long and it still doesn't tell you that this is the 2nd Ant-Man and The Wasp trailer, really it's the 3rd if you count the teaser, which we should.

It's a good trailer, almost too good. I'm getting this feeling they're a bit nervous about following up Avengers: Infinity War with this so they're showing you ALL THE CGI they can. I would not be surprised if you walk out of the movie having felt like you've seen all the best parts already. Or maybe not, I could be wrong. I usually am.

However I will toot my own hort (TOOT TOOT) and say that I guessed pretty much all the major Avengers: Infinity War plot points. I mean my son is pretty much my only witness but trust me I nailed it. I had the opening scene figured out, several plot points along the way and the end scene all nailed. It was a good movie that I would have enjoyed anyway but man watching it all come together just as I had imagined really filled my smug meter, which felt fantastic.

Marvel Studios' Avengers: Infinity War - Official Trailer

This has to be the last Avengers: Infinity War trailer, right? I feel like there've been a hundred of these things at least. The Thor: Ragnarok blu-ray had a boatload of behind the scenes stuff too. It's like I've seen half the movie already.

Anyhoo, it looks really good. I saw some site already talking about how before watching it you HAVE to watch Guardians of the Galaxy again. I guess they're right in a way. I mean I'm crazy well versed in comic book nonsense so I think I take for granted the fact that there are some details about Thanos in the movie that are kind of important to know. The kinds of details that are easy to forget in a 2 hour movie where the Racoon and the Tree steal the show.

I'd recommend going back and watching all the Marvel movies that feature the Infinity Gems Stones. So we're talking: Captain America: The First Avenger
Thor
The Avengers
Thor: The Dark World
Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Guardians of the Galaxy
Avengers: Age of Ultron
Captain America: Civil War
Doctor Strange
Thor: Ragnarok

Although looking at that list you could probably easily remove Thor, Winter Soldier and Civil War. The Stones aren't a big part of those movies, if pressed for time you could lift Captain America: First Avenger out of there too. The Tesseract (which hold a stone) is also heavily featured in The Avengers so you don't really need to double dip. Here's what I'd watch for sure:

The Avengers
Thor: The Dark World
Guardians of the Galaxy
Avengers: Age of Ultron
Captain America: Civil War
Doctor Strange
Thor: Ragnarok

If you watch all those, you'll know where each stone is currently in the MCU. Honestly, it's probably not THAT important to enjoying Infinity War that you even know that, they'll probably recap all of it at the start of the movie but hey, you could do worse with 14 hours of your life.

ANT-MAN AND THE WASP - Teaser Trailer

I wasn't expecting a trailer for the next Ant Man movie, Ant Man and The Wasp, today but here we are. I wonder why Marvel didn't just premier it with Black Panther, that movie comes out in like 2 weeks. Or maybe they did last night (at the Hollywood premiere) and they're just worried about getting an official version on line before someone posts shaky cell phone footage.

Marvel Funko Presents: Submarine Showdown

So Marvel is doing little animated advertisements for their Funko dolls. I guess that's cool? Funko sells like a billion dollars worth of these little plastic dolls. Isn't that kind of amazing? At every comic book convention with a Funko booth they have a lottery and people line up for hours to try and get con-exclusive variants of their favorite dolls. Whenever I go to ECCC I'll see people with these huge bags just full of them. At only $10 a pop I can see how people can get sucked in really quick. It's just the right amount that you don't feel bad about blowing on a whim, but before you know it your spare room is full and you've spent a few grand and your wife is taking the kids to her sisters.

Avengers: Infinity War Official Trailer

Earlier today marvel released the first trailer for the hotly anticipated Avengers: Infinity War.

It looks fine.

I don't know what to say, I'm not as super excited over this as the rest of the internet it apparently. By no means do I think it looks bad or anything it just kind of looks exactly like I expected it to look. Even the bit at the end with the GOTG played out exactly like my son and I imagined it was going to after seeing Thor: Ragnarok. It's probably just me, I'm still thinking about Ragnarok and not ready to move on to the next movie.

Unless it's Black Panther. Black Panther looks epic.

How about this, call me once I've seen Black Panther, then maybe I'll be in the mood for more Hulkbuster armor or whatever.

Disney Is Doing Big BIG Stuff

Earlier today during an Earnings call Disney CEO Bob Iger dropped a bombshell of Star Wars news on all us nerds. Disney is developing a live action Star Wars TV show that will air on the soonish to be launched, as yet untitled, Disney Streaming Service. He didn't stop their, they made it official that the Marvel Deal with Netflix would end in like a year or something AND that they were working on a brand new trilogy or Star Wars movies. This new trilogy will introduce new characters set in a part of the Star Wars Universe we've never seen.

Big stuff right?

I'm sure the speculation will run rampant over what the TV show and the new Trilogy will be about. Like a decade ago when Lucas was still in charge of his own universe he had supposedly written 50 episodes of a Star Wars show that at the time was just too expensive to shoot. I'm sure this new show won't be related to that at all, but its a fun fact for everyone. I'm hoping the TV show follows some smugglers or better yet some bounty hunters. I'm kind of hoping the movie takes place during the Knights of the Old Republic era. I know in this day and age prequels are all tired and junk but how cool would that be to visit a time and place where Sith were everywhere, not just one or two crusty old dudes hiding in shadows.

As far as the Marvel stuff goes, I don't even know if that was new news. Netflix bought out Mark Millar's Millarworld brand of comics specifically so they could get some sweet superhero content they actually own. It's all about owning that content these days. I know everyone creamed their jeans the other day when it was rumored that Disney would be buying Fox's film side because we could finally get the Fantastic Four and the X-Men in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. BUT there's more to Fox than just terribly run Marvel movies. Owning all of Fox's films would be a HUGE get for them when it comes to launching their streaming service. Disney has a lot of content for kids and families to offer but not as much adult fare as other movie studios. Sure Fox is a pretty terrible studio but they've had big, well respected hits recently like the Martian, Life of Pi, or the Taken franchise.

It sounds like the deal was put on the backburner but there's zero chance Disney doesn't try to keep adding to its library in anticipation of their new service. I could write a whole other blog post about how it's actual quite bad that Disney is growing like this but I don't want them to blacklist me from seeing the next The Last Jedi.

Marvel's Inhumans - War For Their World

Sooooo, Marvel's Inhuman's debuts in theaters this Friday. Have you bought your tickets yet? Has anybody bought their tickets yet? Marvel may have spruced up the CGI on Medusa's hair but man, this still doesn't look that great. Certainly not "I'm gonna pay $15 and go see this in the theater" great.

I guess it's cool and all that a concept as weird as the Inhumans is getting a TV show but man I just wish it didn't have to look so mediocre. It doesn't look like the next coming of Game of Thrones, it doesn't look like the next coming of BSG or The Expanse, it doesn't look like the next Lost, it looks like some middling studio exec put the minimal amount of effort into combining all three of those shows. I mean, if this was exclusive to Yahoo or Crackle it would seem just about right.

Who knows, maybe this will be awesome. I've been known to be wrong every now and then. Just last Sunday I thought it would be a good idea to start watching the Game of Thrones finale at 11:30pm. It was not ideal.

Thor: Ragnarok SDCC Trailer

One of the trailers that made a lot of hay at San Diego Comic Con last weekend was this new trailer for Thor: Ragnarok. It's not hard to understand why, it's funny there's some cool looking action and the character/art design is really interesting bad ass.

Almost no one claims the first two Thor movies as their favorites of the Marvel Universe, which is a shame, I think Thor is a much more interesting character than Iron Man or Captain America. Marvel just hasn't found the right mix of action, humor and drama to really connect with the audience. So far Ragnarok looks like it's on the right track. It's like the made a Guardians of the Galaxy movie with the Avengers and Jeff Goldblum.

Marvel's Inhumans - Official Trailer

It's a bird, It's a plane, no it's the trailer for Marvel's Inhumans and it doesn't look very good! There's a lot to unpack in this trailer and I don't really have time to write paragraph after paragraph on the Inhumans but yikes, this looks super boring and nothing like the Inhumans I grew up with. I guess the fact that Marvel demoted them from a feature length movie to a TV show that will premier in theaters says a lot about how confident they were in the property.

For those not in the know Marvel comics lore says that hundreds of thousands of years ago, giant space faring aliens called Celestials visited Earth and split the population into Humans and Inhumans. Humans were given the ability to evolve while Inhumans couldn't except through the introduction of a MacGuffin called the Terrigan Crystals. This somehow lead to Humans dominating the planet and Inhumans living in seclusion in a secret base on the moon.

Then 10 years ago Marvel movies started making huge bank and Marvel realized they gave away one of their best intellectual properties in the X-Men and Mutants to Fox for pennies on the dollar. Marvel needed a replacement for Mutants and turned to the Inhumans. The Terrigan Crystals were blown up and a cloud of mist roamed the earth randomly turning people with trace amounts of Inhuman DNA into super powered beings. Agents of SHIELD has done about 3 seasons of TV taking old mutant storylines and applying them to the concept of Inhumans. It's kinda trash and it's my least favorite thing at Marvel right now.

Back to the TV show, man this looks boring. It's like the decided to remake Game of Thrones but without all the violence and sex. Also what's the point of filming a TV show in Imax if all the scenery is going to be super dull? I'll probably check out a couple episodes of the show just because I'm a completist but I can't imagine going to a movie theater and paying 15 bucks to watch it. Good luck with this Marvel, hopefully you get those X-Men rights back soon so we can go back to the Inhumans being all freaky deaky like they should be.

Black Panther Teaser Trailer

I guess there was a big basketball game the other day and during it Marvel premiered the first teaser for Black Panther. I say I guess because the NBA has been dead to me ever since they moved the Sonics to Tulsa or something.

The trailer is super dope, extra super dope. I'm not the biggest Black Panther fan in the world but I have a pretty big soft spot for Christopher Priest's 60 or so issue run on Black Panther from the early 2000s. I'm hoping this hits that same sweet spot for me. I just watched Ant Man again a couple weeks ago and man did it hold up well. Something really refreshing about a movie where the hero doesn't necessarily have to save the planet or plant the seeds for the next Avengers movie.

Now I fully expect the last infinity gem or stone or whatever it is they call it in the MCU to be in Wakanda but outside of that I'm hoping this gives us a sort of contained techno-jungle adventure. Black Panther has a lot going on in his own world. I'm cool if Thor and the gang stay home for this one.

Ant Man: Alien Invasion

Recently Marvel has released a few animated Ant-Man shorts by French filmmakers Ugo Bienvenu and Kevin Manach. They're kind of fantastic, in fact there's no kind of about it. They're fantastic. The animation style feels like it's lifted right out of a Tales To Astonish from the 1960s.

Marvel never really has had a house animation style the way DC has had ever since Batman: The Animated Series. I'm telling you they could do a lot worse than patterning all their animated shows and films after this. Kids love fake retro stuff these days, or at least adults buying this stuff do. Kids don't even watch cartoons anymore, too busy with their fidget spinners and all that dabbing.

Thor: Ragnarok Teaser Trailer

Did you know that Thor: Ragnarok is being directed by one of the screen writers for Moana? Also did you know this new trailer for Thor: Ragnarok looks amazeballs? Because it does.

Even though I loved it, I know a lot of people felt that Thor: The Dark World was a bit of a misfire. Here's hoping Ragnarok catches some of that Captain America Winter Soldier lighting in a bottle and everyone both loves it and it makes a ton of cash. Just going off the trailer his movie looks like it introduces us to quite a number of classic Thor characters, Hela, Skurge the Executioner, Valkyrie, which I love. In the comics Thor has a really great cast of friends and enemies. Maybe not Spider-Man or Batman level but way more interesting than say Iron Man or Doctor Strange. It'll be fun to see a few of those classic characters get their time on screen. If for nothing else so I see more Hela cosplay at ECCC next year.

Oh yeah, Thor is going to fight Hulk too. That's cool.

New Iron Fist Trailer

A couple days ago Netflix released a new trailer for Iron Fist. It's pretty good. I mean on it's own, in a vacuum, it's fantastic but I have a few minor issues with it that probably aren't really it's fault.

The biggest one is the Might Whitey trope. I've talked about it a bit here before but in case you're unfamiliar the Mighty Whitey essentially refers to a type of story where some white guy is placed in a different culture and suddenly becomes better at everything that culture does, often he becomes an exalted hero or leader. It's a story telling trope that was big in the 18th and 19th century but is still plenty popular today. I mean when I think of famous Samurais, Tom Cruise is the first one to come to mind...

Anyway, the story of Iron Fist is a product of it's time and by that I mean it's kind of a rip off of the TV show Kung-Fu. White kid is stranded in a Mystical Asian city, learns super Karate, becomes the most powerful Karate guy on the planet. It's fine, I mean it's lazy but its fine. If you want to complain about Asian representation in Superhero movies and TV shows ask someone why there's no Kamala Kahn/Ms. Marvel movie, or an Amadeus Cho Netflix series. Iron Fist has a long history in the comics and they're sticking with the original origin. It's like a B- move for Marvel. They did hire RZA to direct an episode so it's not like it's all bad here. Also Iron Fist is far better know as being part of Heroes for Hire with Luke Cage and that book actually had real cultural significance in the 70s with it's portrayal of a pair of black and white superheroes who were best friends. If Marvel/Netflix decides to go that route and once those two characters are paired up, the Mighty Whitey/cultural appropriation stuff starts become less and less of an issue.

My one other knock here on this specific trailer is the whole, hey kids here's the last of the Defenders. I'm totally over the whole Marvel Cinematic Universe stuff. I think it worked fantastic in Captain America and Thor for the build up to the first Avengers movie but it kinda ruined the Iron Man movies. Also obviously Avengers two was a loosey goosey mess and Joss Whedon directly blamed the insistence from Marvel to add a bunch of cinematic universe nonsense into the story. I don't really think any of the Netflix shows have really suffered in the build up to the Defenders but that doesn't mean I'm still not wary of it.

Ok, this is way more that I had planned on writing about this trailer. I'm sure the show will still be good, if nothing else it's probably going to have a great soundtrack.

Spider-Man: Homecoming, the Trailer

I'm kinda meh on the whole Spider-Man: Homecoming thing but this Lego remake of the trailer is super cool. Sometimes these Lego remakes don't turn out so good but this one is legit. It's almost like the guys that put the trailer together were in cahoots with the Lego guys. I bet this goes right to the top, I wouldn't put anything past BIG LEGO.

3 different Spider-Men in the last 10 years has really nerfed my enthusiasm for Spider-Man movies. Homecoming looks fine, I'm sure it won't be bad or anything but watching the trailer I could help but wish it was really for a Ms Marvel movie. Like it hits on almost all the major plot points of the Ms Marvel comic, even down to a bird based bad guy. Also as long as I'm complaining about things that logo is stupid looking. And titling the movie Homecoming? Get over yourself Marvel, yeah people care that this is the first Marvel Studios Spider-Man movie but they don't care that much.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 Teaser Trailer

I can't believe when this new Guardians of the Galaxy trailer hit YouTube I didn't run to post it on my blog. I was probably sleepy or something.

The trailer is every bit as good as you would hope. Rocket wants to blow something up, Groot is acting silly and cute, StarLord is made out to be a bafoon, Gamora is... well I mean she's there. Hopefully she has a bigger role in the movie than StarLord's love interest. Why not give her a big button that blows stuff up too?

Doctor Strange, chase scene clip thingy

I like how this two and a half minute scene from Doctor Strange has a thing at the beginning telling you it's "exclusive". Exclusive to anyone with an internet connection... It's really the most exclusive club.

Anyhoo, Doctor Strange comes out soon (this weekend maybe? I don't know who has the time to keep track of these things?) and all I've heard are positive reviews. Of course those positive reviews have all come from people that work for Marvel Comics so maybe they're not the most neutral reviewers. I don't really have plans to go see it, my wife isn't that impressed with Doctor Strange in the comics so she's kind of meh about it. This might be one that I catch on DVD, sort of like Ant-Man or Thor 2. Jet City Comic Con is this weekend so who has time to go see a movie? Also my son just got a couple Pokemon decks for his birthday, I've heard we have to catch them all.

Ask Me About My Broken Fandom

A few days ago while I was at home burning through some of my remaining vacation days there was a giant ass shit storm on comics twitter over Mockingbird #8, Chelsea Cain and comics fandom. If you want the full professional blogging experience just google it, since you're here though I assume you're not looking for any of that. Long story short Chelsea Cain noted novelist wrote a short comic book series about Mockingbird (as seen on Agents of Shield). When the last issue came out (it was canceled a little bit ago) she quit twitter and said something to the effect of comic books fans can be really awful. She specifically called out comic book fans saying she has been a bestselling author and never had to block anyone on twitter before writing Mockingbird.

Once she deleted her account that's when the real fun started. Any website with any sort of nerd leaning coverage picked up on the story. A hashtag on twitter was created in her support and it was one of the top trending tags for at least a day. Very quickly some in the comic book community started to push back. They wanted to see screen shots of the harassment or it didn't happen. They also wanted to remind you that Mockingbird was terrible and if you liked it you should feel ashamed. Also the last issue deals a bit with Mockingbird's history of sexual assault in (what I found to be) an awkward manner so if you did like the issue guess what? YOU ARE THE SEXIST NOW.

This story dominated comics twitter for about 48 hours. Most comic book professionals were very supportive of Chelsea Cain but a few wanted to make sure everyone knows the reason Mockingbird was canceled was because of low sales and you can't complain about a book being canceled if you're not buying it. One noted professional who is not new to controversy like this chose his words pretty poorly (again this is my opinion) by saying something to the effect of "hey, at least the trolls buy comics". It was sort of an admission no one wanted to hear while this was going on. Like when Tom Brady is in court because he may or may not be tampering with the footballs you don't need Bill Simmons telling you "say what you will about him cheating, but all Tom Brady does is win Superbowls!"

Yes, comic books are a business but no one wants to hear that Marvel is in anyway catering to the worst of their fan base.

Twitter and comment sections were filled with guys like my man Ry here who thinks that comics aren't for everyone. If memory serves me correctly he follows this up with some tweets about how comics were made for the male gaze and should be filled with hot ladies, not ladies who are hot to rage against the patriarchy.


I mean if I had a nickel for every time I've read SJW this last week I'd have like 20 Nickels, because after about 20 times I bailed on reading more about this and just focused on Overwatch. I don't know what to do about people being shitheels to each other, I'm just some schlub on the internet that thinks there should be all kinds of comic books for all kinds or people. When I read a comic I don't like I don't @ the author. I might say on-line why I didn't like it but I'm not here to try and make people feel bad for their work. What do people gain from that? And why are people so insane when it comes to characters and comics they don't own? You don't own Thor. You don't write Thor. You don't get to decided if Thor is a man or a woman. If you don't like it don't buy it, if someone else is liking it and you're not it doesn't mean one of you is wrong. Two different people can like two different things without it meaning anything.

Maybe we should invent a time machine and go back and warn Al Gore not to invent the internet. Or maybe we can hurry up the deal that will sell the internet to the Chinese my dad was telling me about. I cringe thinking about how my kids are going to handle stuff like this. The first time some slobbery gatekeeper tells my daughter that comics are for boys I hope she punches him right in the neck. BOOM NECK PUNCH! Don't worry honey, I'll bail you out of jail if I have to.

Progressive Links

Bill Belichick hates the NFL’s tablets so much he ranted about them for over 5 minutes. It's unfortunate for Microsoft that their name has been featured prominently in most of the articles and tweets I've seen about this. If these were iPads the great Grumblelord Belicheck would still hate them. I mean look at this guy, you know he still has a Thomas map in his car because Siri gave him the wrong directions once. I guess that's the chance you take when you make a big splashy product placement deal, it's great when everything is working but the second something goes wrong every sees it.

5 Bizarre Realities Of Video Game Universes We Just Accept. A couple days ago I mentioned that Rockstar was teasing a Red Dead Redemption sequel. Well they made it official with a release date of (to lazy to look it up) sometime next year. They confirmed it will be available on the PS4 and the Xbox One and.... yeah, there's no PC port. Sons of bitches.

There's a Bizarre Reality I can't accept.

The Weirdest, Most Disturbing 'Sexy' Costumes of 2016. I don't know. Call me old fashioned but the Sexy Hamilton costume is hot. Maybe it's just that I appreciate the theater (not true) more than the fine folks at Gizmodo.

Marvel Has Been Ignoring Fans Telling Them to Stop Being So Progressive Since Forever. Every once in a while Marvel does something that people read as being very political and a certain segment of readers get all bent out of shape. Sometimes it's something big and flashy like a gay wedding or a new POC Spider-Man, sometimes it's something I think is fairly innocuous like having a superhero battle a hate group (they look like trump supporters!). I always think its funny when I read these protests, like have these people never read an X-Men comic? Marvel has been political pretty much from the get go. The earliest Fantastic Four comics were blatantly anti-nuclear power and often very anti-war, two big political issues in the 60s.

I could understand how someone that's really conservative could bristle at the idea that most comic book creators lean heavily towards the left but I refuse to believe their supposed shock. You're surprised that people who gravitate towards the arts are liberal? Have you ever met any human beings?

Anyway, somehow last week I got slightly drug into this "SJW are ruining comics" debate by responding to a tweet from a relatively famous comic book artists. He claimed that Danny Rand (Iron Fist in the upcoming Netflix series) had to be white because being white was central to his character. I quickly (and I thought very politely) mentioned that I believe you could tell a similar Iron Fist story with a non white Danny Rand. I'll admit it wouldn't be the same but I think it wouldn't stray too far from the heart of the character AND it could still be compelling TV. Turns out there are a lot of comic book readers that are NOT ok with changing the race of a character for the big screen. From now on I'm ending all my hot twitter takes with "don't @ me".

Final Luke Cage Trailer

So I guess this is the final Luke Cage trailer. It's been a good run. I look forward to following back up with this series in December when everything is in reruns and I have time to watch something on Netflix. My wife gets Entertainment Weekly (I don't know why either) and they only gave the show a B-. Its the first official review for it I've seen but I take it with a grain of salt. They also didn't give Daredevil S2 a very good review in particular saying the parts with the Punisher weren't very good. Talk about a swing and a miss. The parts with the Punisher were easily the best part of the season. Also Season 2 was probably better than Season 1. Whatever, I'm not going to let BIG REVIEW stand between me and something I want to check out.

Remind me to eat those words when Wonder Woman gets terrible reviews and I get all high and mighty about how terrible DC's movies are.

Ruin The Links

Did Millennials Ruin the Olympics? I know it's hard for older people (like the kind of people that run TV networks) to wrap their mind grapes around this but younger people just don't sit down in front of the TV as much as previous generations did. It's not a matter of getting them to tune in, it's a matter of taking the content to where they are. I mean, I'm too old to know where they are but I know they're out there. Snapchat maybe?

Former NBC Analyst Dwight Stone Calls It's Track & Field Coverage a Disgrace. Former employee calls out old boss is hardly a surprise, but I love that Pole Vault seems to be right at the forefront of the track and field discussion. Pole Vault hasn't been this relevant since Sergei Bubka was breaking the world record every 2 weeks.

The Four Women Saving Wrestling. First off, that's a fantastic illustration, top notch work by GQ. Secondly, this is a great article about the current state of women's wrestling in WWE. It sucks that it's taken so long but we're finally at the fireworks factory. Bayley's debut to the main roster on RAW last night was probably the highlight of the show and definitely got the biggest reaction from the crowd. I know this might sound crazy but when you give the audience a reason to care about something, as opposed to relegating it to pee breaks between the "important matches" people will actually care about it. Crazy huh?

13 New Marvel Cosplay Variants. In theory I really like these Variant covers, but in execution many of them don't have very interesting backgrounds or dynamic poses. The photos and costumes look a little amateurish. Maybe it's the trade dress? I don't know what it is exactly, I just know that as much as I like cosplay I'm not shelling out 9.99 for any of these.